It has been proposed to control certain functionalities of a motor vehicle, such as the unlocking of the doors of the vehicle, by means of a user terminal, for example a cell phone commonly used by the user of the vehicle.
In order to allow this control only to the persons who are indeed authorized, a virtual key is used which is stored in the user terminal and for which an electronic control unit of the vehicle verifies the validity before controlling the unlocking of the doors.
In some cases, such as for example in the context of vehicle rental, it can also be desirable that this possibility of controlling the functionality by means of the user terminal is limited over time.